Into These Formations, Some Things Become Stars
I welcome my porousness, which
granted me this permeability, this
radical tenderness.
I eat dirt and soak up the memory of
all of my ancestors and the thought
of all of the children I’ve yet to
bare.
I don’t want to die, this is about
mourning him while we’re here.
This is about The Silence. I’m mute
Monday through Friday because
sister wife has him then, I use those
days to ferment my woes, bury them
under my intestines and make dinner
for one: kimchi, red meat, and wine.
I welcome my fragility, that
which granted me the ability to
fragment myself.
I am an alternative, and futurist
gargoyle, stuck in the gutter of
this postmodern body.
I forget where touch began:
did I caress my mother in
the womb or did she feel
me first?
I welcome my freedom, that
which granted me the ability to
practice art as worldmaking.
I want to let this experience simmer,
and compose you a ballad in
the separation of sentience.
I know myself through palpitations,
but even in choreography there
exist interpretations.
Who will I want to be when I decide
that I don’t need to drape my body
into a landscape in order to feel alive?
The Farmer with the Earth Colored Eyes
If I immortalize your warts in a blanket
of resin as if they were butterfly wings,
I will have a map inscribed by the soul
of Huila.
Poignant man: you loved and although the
copper of your eyes turned to dirt you are a
farmer, for you the land is gold.
You walk slowly and with a sway, with a
smile of rogue and a childlike gaze that
is unfading.
Under the flush of a Sunday, we drank
coffee with panela, our walk outlined
the Magdalena River until we stumbled
into the carcass of a dog the size of a
microwave oven.
We loaded it into the water piece by piece I
still did not understand that death was as
simple as bathing and I still looked at you as if
you had killed, for refusing to be soft with
what was left of the canine.
I’m sorry I did not understand that although I
was next to you, I remained in my ivory tower,
my visit was just a visit and what you feel for
your orb is incandescent.